Solved the mystery of strange noises coming from a shuttle speaker Starliner of Boeing, still attached to the International Space Station and waiting to return to Earth without a crew: it was a simple disturbance in the audio connection between the vehicle and the ISSas NASA reports on X.
This is not a particularly anomalous problem, since the audio system of the Space Station is very complex and allows the interconnection of multiple spacecraft and modules, so it is quite common to hear noises and disturbances.
The pulsating sound, now stoppedhad been reported by the NASA astronaut Butch Wilmorewho arrived on the ISS aboard the Starliner together with Sunita Williams, during a radio link with the mission control center at the Johnson Space Center in Houston on August 31st.
On that occasion, the astronaut had brought the microphone closer to the source of the noise to make it heard by the technicians listening. Wilmore followed the procedure required in these cases of the entire Space Station crew: contact mission control when disturbances are heard coming from the communication system.
As the NASA post specifies, the audio problem had no impact from a technical point of view, neither on the operations of the ISS nor on those of Starliner.
The shuttle is scheduled to undock on September 7 to make its return journey without Wilmore and Williams, due to technical problems encountered during its first test flight. The release is expected when it is 00:04 in Italy while the descent to the White Sands Space Harbor in New Mexico will be around 18:03, thanks to the help of parachutes and airbags.
